Pilots and people who were at the airport when the crash happened said it appeared the pilot was flying in tandem with another plane when he lost power right after takeoff.

Resting just off a fire road near the Hollister airport, the Beechcraft A45 shows signs of its sudden impact. The engine is exposed, the propeller is bent back and a wheel is just barely hanging on.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration the single-engine plane "lost engine power and the pilot made a forced landing." Nicknamed "Mad Dog," the plane took off Saturday around 1:45 p.m. with another plane it was supposed to fly with.

"Probably about 10, 15 seconds after they called out (that) they were taking off, you hear a mayday coming in," Chance Sarrano said.

Sarrano was working in a hanger on the other side of the airport when he heard the call and jumped into action radioing other pilots to be careful.

"Just let everybody know, 'Hey, be advised, we had a mayday coming in. Airplane is on the ground,'" Sarrano said.

Meantime, a plane belonging to Skydive Hollister had just taken off.

"We circled around for a little while making sure that there wasn't any explosions or anything like that because maybe we could have landed really quickly, and even with our parachutes we could have landed right there, give him some emergency services or something," Skydive Hollister owner Mako Igarashi said.

The Central Coast has witnessed several small plane crashes in recent years. In 2011 a family of four died just after takeoff from the Watsonville airport. Later that year, a 59-year-old crashed and was killed in Chualar.

The pilot involved in Saturday's crash was believed to be up just 300 feet when things went wrong.

About 50 feet away from where the airplane ended up, one of the wheels broke off, as did another chunk of the airplane leading to what was presumably a very rough and dangerous landing.